We Do Adventure

Our banner image used to proudly declare "blogging from Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2008". These days that would be a false claim. We have been in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2008, all the time working as volunteer youth workers with Novi Most , but the blogs stopped a few years back. After what was an undoubtedly inadvisable absence online we started a weekly vlog back in July last year. Over the last eight months these have highlighted different aspects of our work, as well as giving a glimpse into the travels that accompany it. They are all neatly arranged in this playlist below. We hope you enjoy them. You'll find a new video every Sunday on our YouTube channel .

Five hours and twenty minutes sat on a bus between Zagreb, Croatia, and Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina, yesterday morning gave me more than enough time to ponder some of the idiosyncrasies this mode of transport offers in this part of the world. I suppose I should confess I'm no expert; the town I grew up in was not big on buses and, baring one memorable overnight coach journey from London to Edinburgh, most of my bus experience involves the top deck of old London Routemasters. That and school trips. The distinction between a bus and a coach that the English language provides is not one that holds up in translation. Everything is a bus here. There are local buses and there are buses that make international journeys. From the bus station in Jajce we could travel to a number of nearby or neighbouring countries but the only trip I've made thus far is the one to and from Zagreb. This latest journey was the first time we've travelled the route through Bihać and Karlovac; ...

I'm munching on what appears to be a plastic replica of a Jaffa cake but I'll resist the temptation to type another food related blog. Instead I should report the good news that we signed a contract on an apartment today. This has been some time coming. We don't move till next week but this is another step in the right direction. When they say 'let patience have its perfect work' it's all to easy to equate patience to hanging on an hour or two. We're learning that an hour or two is nothing. Again, they say 'it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive' and I can see that if you live only for the destination there might not be a lot of living going on. I love the movie Elizabethtown . In it there's phone conversation where one the main characters asks the other 'I've always wondered this: who are they?' The same question could be posed in this post. In the first instance they is James, the no-nonsense letter-writer from the Bible. H...

It's hard to imagine what moving to another country would have been like in an age before mobile telecommunications and the internet. The distance, the time delays in messages and the chance that you might be somewhere so remote you were completely cut off from the outside world. (People pay good money for that kind of solitude these days.) We've found the adjustments of settling into a new environment much eased by being able to chat to parents and friends on Skype. In fact we've been in contact with friends and family around the world about our move. Then there's this: the blog. Who knows where you're reading it? But for all the wonders of modern technology these electronic communications have a drawback. There's no e-equivalent of walking into a room and refusing to leave until you get what you came for! I have a situation where something borrowed from me before I left the UK was not returned. I've left an answer phone message: no reply. Text message: no ...

Dunkirk is more famous as a place for getting off the continent than onto to it. However it’s apparently a cheaper destination than Calais so at 4am our small ferry nosed its way out of Dover into one of the world’s busiest waterways for the short trip across the Channel. It’s been the better part of ten years since I’ve been on a ferry. I never thought I’d use the Tunnel, let alone recommend other to, but it is so quick and easy. But it has no magic. You miss leaving and there’s no great sense of arrival. You can’t walk out on deck at 5am to survey the view and talk to your video camera! I not sure why I opted for a particularly stodgy English breakfast as we gently swayed across the mercifully calm waters. As last meals go it was particularly poor, although perhaps comfortingly reminiscent of school dinners back in the day before Jamie Oliver got his hands on them! With this laying heavy in my stomach I stretched out on the bench seating in the cafeteria and attempted sleep. Sleep in...

I need to tell tales from our travels before I forget. I know we made the road trip movie but that doesn't go so far as to even scratch the surface of the real experience - sorry! The trip could have been a feature film, although probably more art-house movie than box-office blockbuster. So I'm going to attempt to tell a few select tales here over the next couple of weeks. I will attempt to be truthful and not to embellish the story, but then there was that favourite quote from 'A Knight's Tale': I'm a writer, I give the truth scope! Starting at the beginning has long been recognised as the very best place to start and I shall take as my beginning the moment I laid eyes on Boris's van. It was then that leaving was a truly imminent reality. All I knew up to that point was Boris has a long wheel base, hi-top van. No make or model. What appeared on my parents drive was an all-too-familiar white Transit - I've driven a similar one around Europe - with some v...

Just a glimpse into the adventure that was our road trip to Mostar, Bosnia Herzegovina. Thanks to Boris and Jamie for being part of an unforgettable journey!

WeDoAdventure is what we've called this blog, our YouTube channel and our Facebook group. We'll, we're doing adventure as we travel across Europe. Tonight we were supposed to be in Mostar, unpacking boxes in our new apartment. I'm actually sitting in an Austrian guest house trying to recover from the fact England have just thrashed Croatia in their World Cup qualifier in Zagreb! (We'll be in Zagreb tomorrow.) So the moral of the story is be careful what you call things. My question is: do I really want adventure? I think the answer is 'yes' - I don't have much option right now! But either way the last 48 hours have highlighted how is easy it is to live an unadenturous life (and I've been guilty of that) and how easy it is to make choices that invite adventure. There's a tale to tell from our travels, but that will be editted later. Until then enjoy this short vlog from somewhere near the PEZ factory!